i haven't watched the video yet (i'm not caught up) and i'm very amused by this apparent assassination joke that i have barely any memory of actually writing (possibly due to the effects of mkultra on my memory?)
using J A Seazer music in the level would be nice, but i think i would need to make a particularly intense and cinematic level to actually earn that use. in ASMBXT i used this crazy home stuck song in a very easy and basic level (which was also a tower i think, i only just realized) and it always struck me as bad placement to do that, since the music strongly overshadows the rest of the level in terms of energy to me.
i always did want to use a MIDI of ZUM
in a zelda classic final dungeon
though
Well it is a decent hack but sometime its just too repetitif there no level that actually pop in your face and your like oh yeah that level they all ressemble themselves and just monster along the way.
Blood Ghoul wrote:Sometimes it seems my blood spurts out in gobs, as if it were a fountain's pulsing sobs. I clearly hear it mutter as it goes yet cannot find the wound from which it flows. Before I met you, baby, I didn't know what I was missing.
After the first level in this tier I actually had a decent deathless streak going on for a while, but that ended up coming to an end in the last level raocow played today.
- Level Comments -
Captain Wiggly's Airborne Car Wash: This was a fun little level. I liked the green flames from the sumo bros.
Boom Shell Bell Shoom: I like how raocow never got the name right. Anyway, this does get rather repetitive after a while. I found that you can save a bit of time by barely going into the water; if you throw the shell while right under the hole it will bounce off the wall and cover almost the entire main platform, and by descending slightly you can hit the side platforms. It doesn't make it any less repetitive, but at least it gets it over with faster. I feel like this maybe would have been more fun if it was reduced to just three hits or so.
These Are Shy Guys: Here I thought I was going to get the chance to befriend some fellow shy guys, but: 1) these are snifits, and: 2) these snifits are rude; the first one I saw started attacking me before I even got the chance to say hello.
Seriously though, the fact that you have mere seconds to react to this snifit looking enemy that does not act at all like a typical snifit is a bit of an issue. I find the idea of enemies being able to walk on water to be neat, but these sniffo-torches go so fast and are in such great quantities that with all the water around I feel like trying to outrun them isn't exactly feasible. With that being the case, as well as the fact that you can't just stomp them like a goomba or something, I feel like the only safe way to progress through the level is to slowly and methodically take out all the enemies two at a time by throwing them at each other.
I also liked how you went back and forth while raising the water level, but that does open up the option of just swimming under everything. I ended up noticing this when I went back for a powerup I had left behind for later, but I resisted the urge to skip the entire last third of the level and swam back so that I only skipped a little bit (which I had already played on a previous life). Also, I feel like the water level could stand to go up faster, if only to make it more obvious that it's triggered by defeating the fire bros, since it's not exactly clear after defeating the first one that that's what triggers it (raocow certainly didn't seem to realize it, but it doesn't help that the second one just despawned on him the first time). Also I just feel like having to wait five seconds to progress doesn't exactly add anything of value to the level.
- End of Level Comments -
I'm surprised at how quickly the level scores have been increasing. 10 levels ago we had levels that scored 15 or 16 points, and now we have levels that are scoring 40 and 41 points out of a possible 120. At this rate first place will have a score of 355/120.
There's lots of variety here with these levels, and it makes for a pleasant watching experience.
137th - Captain Wiggly's Airborne Car Wash: I appreciate just how silly the concept here is, even though the level doesn't have much challenge to sink your teeth into. The ending is true art, and is one I'm going to remember. Kudos for going in on these terms.
BOSS: 22nd - Boom Shell Bell Shoom: Not.. a fast boss for how dull the fight plays out. It is definitely more interesting than blue slime major, but I want something a bit more interesting than slow, underwater shell combat.
136th - These Are Shy Guys: ....in wolves' clothing. Though it's pretty neat having Snifit-Torches, they're a bit too densely packed with brothers, too. The rising tides, while a neat idea, isn't taken too far and just ends up being a way to move upwards through the level. It's not too bad, but rough around the edges.
Last edited by Zephyr_DragonLord3 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
I am prone to almost everything... except spontaneous violence.
Any questions, concerns, or aspirations you have with me can go to the PM box... Now here's a quote:
raocow wrote:I know there is a population on Earth. They like to populate. I like to gesticulate. We're friends!
Dino rhino sniffit should be seen as the legitimately funny gag it is. Being upset at getting caught by it, which is in the first five seconds of the level, and feeling legitimately victimized by it, is a miserable state of being. It's HILARIOUS. You go "oh! D:" and then you carry on. It's very well designed.
I regularly stream on Twitch! with other members of the talkhaus. Come watch Monday, Tuesday and Friday at 2PM for blind playthroughs and Pokémon and Touhou and stuff. Come hang out with us!
Perhaps in my effort to make a joke about me being a shy guy I ending up making that first snifit out to be a much bigger issue than it actually is. I actually found it fun having to react to this snifit charging right at me, but I wound up getting caught up in thinking about "proper" level design.
One more thing about my level is I legitimately don't remember how/why I made the background like that. Actually wait, I think I'm remembering now that I was using the graphics of one of the default horizontal backgrounds on the ID of a vertical (animated?) background, which makes it behave strangely. I definitely didn't make the animation manually.
Well it is a decent hack but sometime its just too repetitif there no level that actually pop in your face and your like oh yeah that level they all ressemble themselves and just monster along the way.
Blood Ghoul wrote:Sometimes it seems my blood spurts out in gobs, as if it were a fountain's pulsing sobs. I clearly hear it mutter as it goes yet cannot find the wound from which it flows. Before I met you, baby, I didn't know what I was missing.
Also, man, what a good menu there. Put x2 next to me wanting to see Fiery Permafrost completed.
135th: Demonic Gathering 2 - THE SEQUEL. IT LIVES. I got entirely too excited, just seeing the title. It delivered on that promise, too. The dialogue here is true art, and I can't get enough of this absurdly dumb edgy nonsense. Also, I saw Bowyer in the text once, so my personal headcanon is that this is a Super Mario RPG thing now. That's in my headspace, you're not getting it out.
The gameplay IS improved from the prequel. But it still isn't great. The gun is... there, and fitting. And also loud. I'm just going to chalk up the whole boss deal as just a thing raocow does sometimes. It's not perfect, but it led to an extremely dumb joke and some quality dialogue. I enjoyed this ride so much. also I like touhou too, it isn't strange at all
I am prone to almost everything... except spontaneous violence.
Any questions, concerns, or aspirations you have with me can go to the PM box... Now here's a quote:
raocow wrote:I know there is a population on Earth. They like to populate. I like to gesticulate. We're friends!
I've been looking forward to seeing raocow play this level.
- Level Comments -
Demonic Gathering 2: I think I mostly agree with Sturg here (incidentally, I generally find myself agreeing with Sturg the most out of all the judges). The writing here is great, but the level design leaves a lot to be desired. The level feels really spammy with enemies, and while you do have a gun, the fact that the toads tend to bounce around erratically when you shoot them (sometimes right into you) makes it difficult to take out all the enemies. I think it would have been more fun if the toads only took one hit rather than three so you could focus on the silliness rather than having to deal with awkward gameplay.
It's unfortunate that it took raocow so long to figure out that you need to pick up Mother Brain and use that to defeat Bowser. That part did make me stop and think for a bit, but with the extremely finite amount of things you can do it didn't take long for me to try jumping at Mother Brain. I personally thought it was funny, but I can understand why raocow wouldn't be one to laugh after being stuck there for what I assume is a considerably long time. Also, you're supposed to actually die and respawn after defeating Bowser, but since raocow had invincibility on that didn't happen.
Also, I like the contrast between the music used for the text crawls at the start and end, and the ordinary Mario music used for the gameplay portions.
Cyril wrote: ↑3 years ago
i choose to believe that umbra is shadow the hedgehog reincarnated in the mario universe
According to this very important canon lore from the first Demonic Gathering,
Does this mean that Shadow is Mario reincarnated in the Sonic universe, who was then reincarnated back home as Umbra?
yes. mario died on 3/31/2021 and was sent back in time 50 years to be created aboard the ark, then died at the end of sonic adventure 2 to be reincarnated as umbra. when umbra died in the explosion he got sent back to being shadow in sonic heroes, and then when shadow dies in sonic forces 2 (coming 2024) he becomes lumber aka umbra again
i've honestly never played a video game in my life
Dragon Fogel wrote: ↑3 years ago
-Text box says "Brain Buster" right before "Get the hint?"
-There's a Mother Brain
-raocow gets hung up on "Think outside the box"
Now, granted, I wouldn't have immediately thought of picking up Mother Brain but I would have probably made her the focus of my experimentation.
To be fair, I thought the "Get the hint?" was to "think outside the box", too, so I thought, "Oh, you gotta keep Bowser above that little hidey-hole on the right until...something happens??
Greetings. I am sorry that this level kinda sucks!
Both of the Demonic Gatherings were released highly unfinished,but all things considered, I'm pretty alright with how the first one turned out,because making what I wanted it to be was simply not possible at the time,before LUA and all that. The only thing I regret I couldn't include was the intro and rudimentary multi checkpoint system: you were meant to start in a featureless area with a text crawl in the background and a bunch of numbered doors that lead to every section of the level. It wasnt a proper multi midpoint system, because it ran off the honor system,there was nothing stopping you from skipping straight to the end if you wanted, you just at certain points were meant to be given "permission" to use the corresponding numbered door when you die. I never finished it because I couldnt figure out how to make a scrolling background (I think even in this one I still couldnt? i think the intros just a really big,moving sprite)
The level design of the first Demonic Gathering was a result of me aimlessly messing about in the editor,testing out all sorts of NPCS, creating setpieces out of them and then just kinda slapping them into the level with no rhyme or reason. Looking back on it,it's bizzare,awful, and also kinda .. endearing in a way? Theres genuine effort put into it and I like some of the setpieces, but the overall quality is wildly inconsistent,it has no conveyance at all and worst of all,it's painfully vanilla and disconnected from the jokes/plot/overall aesthetic.
The second Demonic Gathering was meant to be kind of an.... "apology" for the first one, I guess? I wanted to make a level in the same spirit as the original,but all killer and no filler, with much better pacing,checkpointing and LUA code to spice up the level, do stuff I wanted to in the first one (give Luigi GUN) and Advanced Joke Technology.
The first Demonic Gathering was very lazily made over the course of a few weeks, with the actual time spent on it .... maybe like 20-30 hours?
This time around,I procastinated until very close to the deadline, and despite not having touched SMBX since making the first one,decided to set myself a strict deadline for added motivation: crunch it in one big session on the last day. Not a very good plan!!
I figured I'd start by working on the LUA code. Of course I had no experience with it,but I'd been tooling around with Game Maker for like 10 years so I thought I'd get the hang of it quickly enough. Well eventually I kinda did. I became engrossed by it,basically trying to create my own game on top of the SMBX engine and completely neglected the actual level in favour of things like attempting to for 3 hours straight give the cops a gun attack,which I ultimately never succeeded at because I have absolutely no clue how smbxs animation/sprite system works and the cops kept turning into garbled,horrible messes every time they fired a bullet. With so much wasted time, no work on the actual level done and frustration setting in, in the last few hours,I just kinda shut off my brain and instinctually cobbled together a terrible level, to only serve as connective tissue between the jokes and give Luigi things to shoot at.
I'm not really happy with how this level turned out. I mean I don't care all that much,because ultimately it was just meant to be a dumb joke level and it succeeded at that,I think. But I wanted it to be overall better than the first one. Instead of really bad,but kinda funny, it could have been aggressively mediocre and maybe slightly funnier!! But.... the future refused to change.
Anyway in conclusion, anime is bad. manga? also bad. the alt-right channer culture thats omnipresent in weeaboo spaces? the worst of them all.
The only good anime things are yuri,touhou and touhou yuri. Thank you. My final message. Goodbye
no offense but even when praising touhou, saying "it panders to the moe crowd" sounds a lot like code for "it has girls in it". nothing about touhou is moe, not a single touhou character is moe, every single one is a rude asshole
i think the internet in general should think about how it talks about these things and the implications thereof, but i won't go on about it now because i don't want to be like putting it all on this one person or anything
Well it is a decent hack but sometime its just too repetitif there no level that actually pop in your face and your like oh yeah that level they all ressemble themselves and just monster along the way.
Blood Ghoul wrote:Sometimes it seems my blood spurts out in gobs, as if it were a fountain's pulsing sobs. I clearly hear it mutter as it goes yet cannot find the wound from which it flows. Before I met you, baby, I didn't know what I was missing.
Leet wrote: ↑3 years ago
no offense but even when praising touhou, saying "it panders to the moe crowd" sounds a lot like code for "it has girls in it". nothing about touhou is moe, not a single touhou character is moe, every single one is a rude asshole
Maybe I'm reading too deep into it but that feels like it's steering in the exact opposite extreme direction of generalization as the level creator. I always thought the big appeal of it was that there is a character for everyone in there. Like yeah, the overall tone is pretty silly but in terms of personalities, you have quite a fair deal of variety, even if a lot of the main ones participate in trying to out-smug each other.
In terms of aesthetic it does go pretty hard towards cuteness, though I wouldn't really consider that pandering. That would imply some sort of direct intent to appeal to a specific demographic, Zun's just always been doing his thing of putting some weird, but fun characters out there. But if someone were to just look at the official art style, then I can see how they could interpret it that way. Not that I'm saying that's all there is to it.
Anyway, to not derail the thread too much, I'm glad we're in the block of silly shenanigans of the contest. It's always fun to see the levels that had a fun creative spark, but sadly not quite enough polish to really get there. Something about the early ranks just has a certain unique charm to it.
Leet wrote: ↑3 years ago
no offense but even when praising touhou, saying "it panders to the moe crowd" sounds a lot like code for "it has girls in it". nothing about touhou is moe, not a single touhou character is moe, every single one is a rude asshole
but isn't yuuka youkai moé according to zun /s
if i directed a touhou anime i'd make it an adventure/comedy show, no fanservice whatsoever
#1 mega cd enjoyer AND "making fun of"-er 
